It was probably on a matter of time that Google‘s fascinatingly unbranded launch netbook for their new Chrome OS was hacked to run something a little more full featured, but even we’re surprised to see Canonical’s Ubuntu browser up and running on the Cr-48 soon.

Of course, the Cr-48 is already pretty hacker friendly — it already hasa concealed but readily accessible developer switch —but this Ubuntu install is still pretty ingenious. It’s not as easy as just booting Ubuntu off of a USB drive, as you might normally do.

Rather, Cr-48’s boot process is missing a pretty vital part necessary for Ubuntu’s kernel to work: initrd. The solution is to actually use Chrome OS’s existing kernel and tricking it into booting Ubuntu instead.

This is a pretty involved process, truth be told, and definitely beyond the capabilities of most users… but as you can see in the video above, once all the steps have been gone through, it works pretty well, dual-booting between Chrome OS and Ubuntu with aplomb, and it looks like there’s little chance of permanently bricking your Cr-48 if you do choose to go this route.